


atlas

by jemmasimmmons



Series: every hope [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, framework mentions, post s4 speculation, scar discussion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-12-13 09:19:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11756763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemmasimmmons/pseuds/jemmasimmmons
Summary: "Fitz knows Jemma’s body. He knows the location of every single freckle and scar left on her skin. He has measured out the distances between them with contour lines of kisses and used his fingers like a compass to encircle them. If he wanted to, he could draw an atlas of them all from memory, to make himself a map to show him the way home.He knows her body; he knows that he has never felt this scar before."Fitz makes a discovery, which leads to he and Jemma having another conversation in outer space. Post season four finale.





	atlas

**Author's Note:**

> popsicle86 asked if i would write a matching piece to 'every hope' with fitz finding out about jemma's experiences, and since i had originally planned on including that in 'every hope' i decided to piece together my notes from that to write a full fic.
> 
> i hope you guys like this!

 

 

“I have gone marking the atlas of your body

with crosses of fire.”

Pablo Neruda

 

 

It starts with a kiss on the cheek.

This has become a part of their new routine, as much of a staple to their days as the meals in the space station canteen, and as regular as the automatic lights and alarms. After dinner, they walk together from the station’s mess room, sometimes hand in hand, always side by side, and when they reach their matching bunk doors Jemma will lift herself onto her tiptoes and kiss his cheek gently before saying goodnight.

It is a very different kind of intimacy to the kind they had several months ago, but after the long weeks of aching distance between them it feels to Fitz like a breath of fresh air. In fact, there is something almost exciting in it to him, this relearning of tenderness, and it feels like a luxury, an indulgence, something to treasure.

For the past few evenings though, the gesture has started to spark something inside him, a hankering for something else, and the memory of her body moving with his, which is why tonight when Jemma had reached up to kiss his cheek, Fitz had kissed her back.

It must have been a movement born from muscle memory, because he hadn’t realised what he was doing until it was done, his head turning just in time to catch her lips with his own. The kiss had lasted only for a moment before they started apart, just long enough for Fitz to close his eyes and savour the taste of her.

He had felt Jemma suck in a gasp as she pulled away, but before he had the time to panic about what he had done, she had brought her hand to the back of his neck and was surging forward to kiss him back.

_Again_ , she seemed to be telling him, _again. Please don’t stop_.

And so, he hadn’t.

They had tumbled backwards into his bunk together, a mess of scattered kisses, hitching breaths and wandering hands in the half-dark. Their bodies were apparently elated by the new-found freedom their minds were allowing them, and were making use of every second they were given.

Fitz isn’t quite sure how they end up on his bed, with Jemma flat on her back while he traces the curve of her cheek with his palm as he continues to kiss her, but he can’t quite bring himself to care. After everything that they have been through, surely the fact that they are there is enough.

Their kisses are becoming more heated now, and Fitz can feel Jemma’s skin start to flush underneath his touch as her fingers scramble for the material of his t-shirt.

He breaks their kiss just long enough for her to pull it over his head, before ducking down to resume his rediscovery of her lips, her neck, and all the soft spots of her skin he hadn’t thought he’d ever know again. She lets him, arching her back and digging her fingernails into his shoulders. Fitz grins, a wave of heat rolling down his spine, as he sucks on her bottom lip.

Being able to kiss her like this again is electric, it is exhilarating.

It feels like being reborn.

His t-shirt is long forgotten behind the pillow, and Fitz’s fingers twist with the material as he cradles the back of Jemma’s head with one hand. On her part, she has somehow managed to shimmy off her pyjama bottoms without him noticing, and he has to kick them out of the way before he can kneel between her legs. His tongue traces the inside of her lip as his free hand starts to move slowly up her calf to reach her thigh.

Over the thudding of his heart, Fitz hears Jemma give a slight moan at this, her breath tickling the stubble on his chin. A slow smile starts to spread across his lips as his hand runs further up her right leg, reaching her knee, and then-

He freezes, his mouth jerking away from hers as his fingers touch rough, puckered skin.

Fitz knows Jemma’s body. He knows the location of every single freckle and scar left on her skin. He has measured out the distances between them with contour lines of kisses and used his fingers like a compass to encircle them. If he wanted to, he could draw an atlas of them all from memory, to make himself a map to show him the way home.

He knows her body; he knows that he has never felt this scar before.

Jemma must have felt him go tense because the thin hairs on her bare leg prickle underneath his hand.

‘Fitz?’

Fitz splays his hand out. The scar is about the length of his palm and half as wide, and, when Jemma flicks on the bedside lamp, he sees that is it flushed as pink as her cheeks. Recent, then. Probably dating from around the time of the Framework.

Feeling his pulse pound against his temple, Fitz looks up at Jemma. There is a curious look in her eyes, almost guilty, and it takes him a moment to form his question.

‘Where-where did you get this?’

As soon as he’s asked the question, a sudden memory from the Framework washes over him, alarmingly vivid in a way they haven’t been for weeks. A gun in his hand, a foggy green light in a warehouse, and a cry of pain. _Jemma,_ crying in pain.

Drawing his hand away from her as if he’s been burnt, Fitz feels his ears start to ring as he realises the scar is positioned exactly where the Doctor had shot her.

He knows he must have blanched, and his hand is trembling when Jemma covers it with her own, clutching at his fingers hard enough to make him look up at her.

‘No,’ she says, gently but firmly. ‘No, Fitz, it wasn’t that. Injuries sustained inside the Framework can’t be transferred into the real world. They were artificial, just like everything else in that world. You know that.’

And he did, now that she had reminded him, and he swallows back his initial panic. Injuries inside the Framework couldn’t scar you. Only ones from the real world could.

Fitz brings his hand back to Jemma’s thigh and rubs his thumb against the edge of the scar.

‘Okay,’ he says evenly. ‘So if it wasn’t…wasn’t _that_ …then, what was it? How did you get it?’

Now that she has reassured him that it wasn’t the Doctor’s actions that had hurt her, the vaguely guilty look has returned to Jemma’s eyes and she draws her legs out from underneath him. As she moves, Fitz does too, pushing himself up into a sitting position on the bed.

The light from the lamp is hazy and warm, a stark and welcome contrast to the bright overhead lights that signify daytime for the inhabitants of the space station. Bathed in it as she is, Jemma’s skin appears sallow, and her freckles are far more pronounced. The previous flush in her cheeks has vanished, and Fitz notices with concern how pale she is as she brushes a loose strand of hair back behind her ear.

With a sinking feeling, he starts to regret how insisting his question about something she might rather forget had sounded.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, letting his hand hover her knee. ‘Sorry, that wasn’t what I… I mean, you don’t have to tell me, not if you’re not ready.’

Jemma shakes her head.

‘No,’ she says quietly, before raising her voice and meeting his eyes. ‘No, it’s alright. I probably should have told you weeks ago, anyway.’

She sighs, and takes hold of his hand, bringing it down finally to rest upon her knee. Linking his fingers with hers, Fitz squeezes her hand and receives a fleeting smile in return. It does little to dispel the growing unease in his stomach.

‘Before Daisy and I escaped the Playground,’ Jemma says, ‘I got into a struggle with an LMD and it stabbed me. That’s how I got the scar.’

She is trying hard to keep her tone light, probably for his sake as much as her own, but the words still feel like a punch to Fitz’s gut. All of a sudden, the familiar, sick feeling of responsibility creeps into his chest and for a moment it is difficult to breathe as he understands that something he helped to create had done this to her. Something he had helped to create had _hurt_ her.

He opens his mouth to reply to her, before realising he has no idea what to say, and shuts it again.

He imagines, briefly, how utterly terrifying it must have been to have a machine wearing the face of a friend turn against you and feel his chest tighten again, this time with anger that Jemma had had to go through that.

No sooner has this thought entered his mind than it is overtaken by another.

‘Whose LMD was it?’

If he hadn’t been holding on so tight to her fingers, he wouldn’t have noticed her flinch.

‘Does it matter?’

Fitz snorts, softly. ‘The fact that you don’t want me to know suggests that it does.’

The queasy feeling has reached his stomach as it dawns unpleasantly on him that her unwillingness to respond to his question is probably all the answer he needs.

Jemma rubs her hand across her face, and it occurs to Fitz how tired she looks. Up until recently, he knows that he must have been looking just as tired, but since their late night discussion in her bunk a few weeks ago he has begun to be able to sleep more easily, waking with nightmares only once or twice as opposed to multiple times during the night.

It gives him a pang, deep inside, to think that perhaps she has been feeling just as tired this whole time, and that he hadn’t been looking at her long enough to see it.

Fitz shifts further up the bed, so that he and Jemma are sitting next to each other. This close up, he can see that her eyes are brimming with tears, and that the guilty look in them has evaporated, leaving behind only an anxiety that he can see is gnawing away at her.

‘Jemma…’ he begins, softly.

She rolls her eyes with a sigh, and a single tear trickles down her cheek before she glances down at him.

‘It was yours,’ she admits.

Fitz exhales through his nose, and nods. He had known it was coming; why else would she have been so reluctant to tell him whose it was? He waits for a moment, half expecting her to pull her hand out from under his.

It is only when she doesn’t, and clings on tighter instead, that he finds the courage to take a deep breath.

‘Tell me about it.’

And so she does.

She tells him how convincing the machine had been, a far better actor than he ever was, and how she had no reason to doubt it wasn’t truly him until they’d reached the workshop. She tells him about the trick it had played on her, and its masterful emotional manipulation that had even made her start to doubt that _she_ was real. Fitz notices her hands start to shake here, and he draws the blanket up to cover her knees.

Jemma tells him how his LMD had knocked her out, and tried to insert her into the Framework manually before she’d managed to disable it and met up with Daisy. Her language is evasive, and vague, and Fitz begins to wonder whether there is a part to the story that she is still avoiding telling him. He wonders, uneasily, why this might be.

When her story comes to an abrupt end, Jemma falls silent, her gaze drifting down to the bed sheets. Sitting next to her, Fitz absently strokes the back of her hand as he waits for the fog of re-lived memories to clear.

After a few moments, Jemma licks her lips and looks up at him.

‘Can I ask you something?’

He is nodding, almost before she’s finished her question.

‘Yeah. Anything.’

‘I know that it had your memories, but I also know that it had been programed to manipulate me. There was something that it said…something that it talked about, and I want to know whether that was real or not. Whether that was _you_ or not.’

Fitz frowns, wracking his brains for what his LMD could have said to her.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘What’s that?’

Jemma meets his eyes, and he can see the hesitation in her face.

‘It said you’d been thinking about marriage.’

_Ah_.

Fitz slumps back against the wall, temporarily at a loss for words.

_That_.

It was true, he had been thinking about marriage. Admittedly however, it had been in the more abstract sense, as opposed to planning out an elaborate proposal or even going ring shopping.

Despite this, if Fitz was being truly honest, he had been thinking about marriage for a long time now, almost as long as they had been together. Not intently, or even consciously sometimes, but he had often found himself perusing a ‘for sale’ listing Jemma would leave on the bed, or catching sight of a wedding ring on an agent’s hand, and formed the words in his head: _when we get married_. At the time, it had felt like the thought was only in the back of his mind, a subconscious idea that, one day, might have braved its way to the forefront.

Apparently though, he must have been thinking about it a little harder than he’d thought.

Looking back at Jemma, Fitz sees that she is biting her bottom lip, scanning his face expectantly.

‘Yeah,’ he says, as simply as he can. ‘That was real. That was me.’

Jemma nods, her reply as simple as his had been. ‘Okay.’

Unexpectedly, she reaches out for him. Fitz lets her, wrapping his arms around her back to draw her closer. They sink down onto the mattress together, her head resting on his bare chest and his hands threading through her hair. Feeling Jemma’s heartbeat patter against his skin, a persistent acknowledgement that she is still there, that she is still breathing, Fitz closes his eyes.

It goes unspoken, the silent agreement between them that no more needs to be said about it tonight. It is enough to know that the idea is there, that it exists in the world, to know that one day it can be brought back up again when they are both ready.

Between the two of them, they will hold it safe until a better time.       

Underneath the blanket, Fitz feels Jemma’s leg brush against his own, and he touches her thigh, lightly, where the scar is.

‘Does it still hurt?’

Jemma shakes her head. ‘Not, not anymore. It aches every once in a while, though. Usually when I’ve been standing for longer than normal, or if the air conditioning is colder for some reason. It gets a little stiff then, too.’

She pauses, worrying at her lower lip, before admitting, ‘I think there might be some damage to the muscle, or possibly a nerve; I’m not sure. There wasn’t time to do any tests before they brought us here and the station really isn’t that well-equipped, medically speaking. I’ve been some exercises in the morning, even so, to try and build up the strength again.’

Fitz nods, feeling his throat tighten. ‘We’ll find a doctor, once we get home,’ he promises. ‘Ask them what they think, and see if there’s anything they can do.’

‘Yeah.’ Jemma’s voice is quiet, muffled against his chest. ‘That sounds sensible.’

She sighs, and tucks her head a little closer into his shoulder, allowing him to rest his arm comfortably across her middle.

They have been lying there for a long time, both of them absorbed in their own thoughts, before Fitz speaks again.

‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?’

Jemma groans lightly, and her breath is so warm on his bare skin that it makes a deep shiver run down his spine.

‘Oh, Fitz. How could I have done?’

It is such an odd answer that he frowns, and pushes himself up onto his elbow to look down at her.

‘What do you mean by that?’

Jemma shakes her head, carefully avoiding eye contact with him.

‘You’d been doing so well, recently,’ she murmurs. ‘Dealing with everything, I mean. I didn’t want to bring anything up that would have brought back those memories for you, or made you feel worse again.’ She looks up at him at last, and Fitz finally understands why she had looked so guilty when he’d first discovered her scar. ‘I couldn’t do that to you.’

A wave of emotion rises in his chest, and Fitz feels tear prick at his own eyes as he watches Jemma’s spill out onto her cheeks. Gently, he lowers himself back down next to her and wipes them away with his thumb.

She’d been holding all of her pain in for months now, keeping it to herself, in order to protect him. Just the thought of it makes Fitz want to sob, and he reaches out to pull her close to him again.

‘Jemma…’ he starts, shakily, before steeling himself and beginning again. ‘It wasn’t just me who went through the Framework. Our whole team did, which means that _you_ did. You went through some god-awful things, before, during, and after. And the fact that I went through bad things too in no way means that your bad things become any less bad. We can’t com- _compare_ our experiences like that. What happened to you was terrifying too, and _wrong_ , and it shouldn’t have happened.’

Fitz sucks in a sharp breath, and Jemma’s eyes start to water again, as they both hear him tell her the exact same thing she had said to him only weeks before.

‘It shouldn’t have happened,’ he repeats.

She nods in agreement, her hair scratching against the pillow, and Fitz feels her shoulders sag as she leans into his side.

‘I love you,’ he says, taking solace in the truth of the words, ‘and I want to help you. I hate the idea that you felt that you had to hide how you were feeling, because of me. I don’t ever want you to feel like you have to do that again. We’re in this together. We always have been, and we always will be.’

Jemma nods again, and Fitz wonders whether it’s just his imagination or whether the gesture holds more determination this time. He finds her hand, clenched into a fist on the bed between them, and covers it with his own.

‘You were there for me,’ he murmurs to her, ‘when I needed you to be. These past months, these past weeks especially. Even when I didn’t know I needed you, you were there, and I don’t know what I would have done without you.’

Jemma huffs a little, and raises her face to his. ‘You don’t have to-‘

He doesn’t mean to silence her, but as he leans forward to kiss her on the forehead she falls quiet even so. Underneath his hand, she unclenches her fist and allows him to link their fingers together once more with a sigh.

Turning his head, Fitz rests his cheek against Jemma’s temple.

‘Please,’ he whispers. ‘Let me be here for you.’

A few minutes pass, with the two of them lying quietly side by side, and Fitz is beginning to think that Jemma has fallen asleep when he feels her forehead crease determinedly, as though she has just made an important decision.

‘There’s one other thing,’ she says softly, ‘that I haven’t told you yet.’

Fitz’s heart thumps, and he licks his lips anxiously. ‘Okay.’

He waits, shifting back slightly on the pillow so that he can see her face in the lamp light. Jemma’s eyes look heavy, and a little too far away for comfort as her fingers worry at the hem of the blanket. Although she seems determined to tell him something, Fitz can see how much she is struggling to know how. Eventually, she takes a deep breath and looks up to meet his eye.

‘I had to kill it, Fitz.’

For a moment, the enormity of what she is telling him doesn’t sink in.

Fitz lies stock still, staring at her. _It_ , yes, of course she’d had to disable it. It couldn’t have been allowed to roam the halls of the Playground freely, not with the programming that it had. Of course she’d needed to disable it; why had that been such a difficult thing for her to say?

And then, he realises that Jemma hadn’t used the word _disable_. She’d used the word _kill_ , she had _killed_ it.

And _it_ had been wearing his face.

Before he has the chance to say anything, Jemma is speaking again like a dam has broken somewhere inside of her and she no longer has the means to stop the words from pouring out.

‘I had to do it, Fitz, it would have put me in there the same as the rest of you and then I’d have been useless. But even though I knew, I _knew_ it wasn’t you, it kept trying to convince me, even when I had the knife and there were wires everywhere, but it still had your voice, and your face, and there was blood, so much blood, and- oh, God-‘

All of a sudden, she clamps her hand over her mouth and scrambles upright. Alarmed, Fitz follows her, thinking that she is about to be sick. His hands hover, uncertainly, at her back as Jemma takes several deep, gulping breaths.

‘It looked just like you,’ she whispers, and he can see the horror in her eyes as she remembers, ‘exactly like you.’

It feels like Fitz’s heart has crumpled inside his chest.

He has had enough nightmares, enough close calls over the years to build up a pretty clear picture in his head of what it might be like to watch Jemma die. All he has to do is recall the clamminess of her skin when she contracted the chitauri virus, or her screams in Gloucestershire, or even the look on her LMD’s face when AIDA had twisted the screwdriver, and he breaks out in a cold sweat.

But Fitz realises now that all of these things are nothing, _nothing_ , compared to the very real image Jemma must now have of having to watch him die.

‘Jemma,’ he says, hearing his own voice crack with emotion, ‘Oh, Jemma…’

She starts to cry then, in a way that Fitz has never heard her cry before. Her sobs are loud, and ungraceful, and they wrack her body so hard that she doubles over, unable to hold herself upright under the weight of them.

It is this that finally pulls Fitz back into himself, and he reaches out for her. A malicious little voice at the back of his mind whispers that she might not want this, that he might only be making it _worse_ , but Fitz ignores it. He touches Jemma’s shoulder, and she all but collapses against him.

He tries to keep them both balanced as she cries, shifting his arms down to hold her around her middle rather than her shoulders, allowing her to lean against his chest more easily. He holds her tight, as if their contact could transfer the pain in her heart into his, and whispers to her between sobs that he is sorry, _he is so sorry_.

For the first time since their emergence from the Framework, Jemma doesn’t stop to tell him that he doesn’t need to say so. Instead, she just cries even harder.

_Evil_.

The clarity of the realisation makes Fitz shiver; anything that could make Jemma cry like this must have been born from pure evil.

He has heard both her and the rest of their team use that word before, to describe the Darkhold’s power and how that had seeped into the world of the Framework, but it is only now that he realises he has never thought it himself.

_Evil_.

What had happened to them because of the Darkhold had been evil. The thought makes him angry, but it also fills him with determination. He isn’t going to let what happened to them define the rest of their lives.

Exhaling, and in a peculiar way feeling a little lighter, Fitz brings one hand up to Jemma’s head and begins to stroke her hair.

Once it becomes apparent that she has no more sobs left, and instead starts to give those strange, shuddering hiccups that come at the end of a crying fit, he reaches behind them for his t-shirt. Carefully, he starts to mop up her tears, wiping the corner of the shirt underneath her eyes and on her cheeks, and, when he hopes Jemma isn’t looking, he gives his damp torso a bit of a rub too.

She _is_ looking though, and tuts slightly when she notices, as if at the inconvenience of her own tears. Lifting her hand, she helps him dry a patch on his side that he’d missed and offers him a warm, if a little watery, smile.

‘Thank you,’ she whispers, and Fitz nods, understanding that in the grand scheme of things she means that for more than just the t-shirt.

With a sigh, Jemma lies back down on the bed and Fitz follows her, turning onto his side so that they are nose to nose, heart to heart. He suddenly feels a lot calmer, as if the highly charged atmosphere in the room has been defused somehow by Jemma’s tears, releasing the tension. Glancing across, he sees that she looks a lot calmer too, even though her eyes are still rimmed red.

There is a peace that comes with unburdening your heart, a peace that comforts and exhausts all at once, and Fitz allows that feeling to envelop them, hoping that it will stay.

Jemma moves her hand on the mattress, bringing it forward to link her little finger with his.

‘What would you have done?’ she asks him. ‘If it had been you?’ She pauses, rubbing her lips together. ‘If it… _it_ had been me?’

It is a question that isn’t exactly new to Fitz; almost immediately after coming out of the Framework the _what-if_ s had hit him.

What if it had been him who had insisted on going with Davis? What if it had been Jemma left alone in the control room, Jemma who AIDA had found and taken? The thought of it makes bile rise in the back of his throat, and he shivers involuntarily at the idea of the android laying its hands on her, knocking her out and taking her prisoner.

He tries to imagine being attacked by something that looked, spoke and felt exactly like Jemma. He tries to imagine fighting it off, having to hurt it in order to save himself, and how it would cry out with her voice when he did.

But it wouldn’t have been her. It would have been made from wires and fibres, and it would have been utterly lacking the brilliant heart that he loved. And Fitz knows exactly what he is capable of to protect that heart.

‘If it had been me,’ he begins carefully. ‘I would have done whatever it took to make sure I brought us both home safely.’

He reaches out, and brushes Jemma’s hair away from her face, tipping his forehead down to rest against hers.

‘Which is exactly what _you_ did.’

Her eyes flutter shut, fully anticipating his next move as he bends forward and kisses her, lightly, on the mouth.

Jemma’s lips taste salty, and they are warm against Fitz’s own as he allows the kiss to deepen, his heart starting to hammer against his chest again. He slides his arm around her waist, drawing her closer as they continue to kiss, their lips moving against one another’s in a way that had become as familiar as breathing.

There is less urgency to this kiss than there had been to the ones they had shared at the beginning of the evening. Now, instead of trying to make up for lost time, they are revelling in the time that they have, in the time that they _will_ have.

It is more than coming alive again; it is being reminded of how much more they have to live.

Jemma’s hands come up to hold his cheeks to pull him even nearer to her, but before she can alter the pace of the kiss too much, Fitz breaks away gently. He meets her gaze as she looks at him, a little reproachfully, and smiles.

He shifts, so that his head is level with her chest, and finds her thigh underneath the sheet. Slipping one hand underneath her leg, he traces the outline of her scar with his thumb, learning it and adding it to his knowledge of her, his love of her. Quietly and tenderly, he bends his head and presses his lips to the puckered skin.

Jemma shivers, and her hands grip at his bare shoulder. Emboldened by this, Fitz moves his lips to outside of the scar, and plants a string of kisses up her inner thigh, tasting the sweetness of her skin. His fingers skim underneath the hem of her underwear as he kisses her hip bone, and then her stomach, and underneath her breast until he reaches her clavicle.

Jemma all but hauls him up the last short distance to reach her lips again, kissing him with a sudden eagerness as she wraps her arms around his neck. Fitz rolls onto his back as she climbs on top of him, her legs locked either side of him, and begins to pepper the corners of his mouth with generous, messy kisses.

She lifts her head, and through the soft curtain of hair falling around her shoulders, he sees that there is a light in her eyes.

‘I love you,’ Jemma whispers, and the words make Fitz feel whole.

Reaching up, he cups the back of her head with his hand and kisses her, pouring all the love, gratitude and healing he can into the gentle force of it. When Jemma’s teeth graze against his bottom lip, he tastes her offering him the same things back.

‘I love you too,’ he breathes against her, and closes his eyes.

That night, the entire universe could have collapsed around them and Fitz would have been none the wiser. The only thing that matters to him is his body, and how it fits with Jemma’s like they are each other’s missing piece, and how they will face whatever comes next the way they have faced everything else.

_Together_.

 

 


End file.
